Category Archives: Helles Lager

New craft breweries continue to open across the Chicago suburban area with amazing regularity. In this edition we’ve headed south-west to Oswego, where head brewer Marc Wilson is putting in the hours to ready the Oswego Brewing Company for opening in late April to mid-May.

Marc is a friend of the show from his former brewery, so of course we immediately gave him a shout to see if we could come down and get a progress report from him. The first half of this show presents that report where we get a flavor for some of the aspects of opening a new brewery and tap room, and what to expect from OBC as they make their mark on the Illinois brewing scene. Watch their build-out in pictures here…

Joining me for the second half, which we recorded up at Church Street Brewing in Itasca, is ex-co host and brewing expert, Mark Naski. Together with CSB head brewer TJ Bachorz and current co-host Chuck Fort, we do the unthinkable by comparing a helles lager from Six Ten Brewing in Tampa FL., to CSB’s own Heavenly Helles.

And finally, because growlers don’t last long, Mark has brought a couple along for tasting, and we go from Tampa to Nampa, Idaho. Crescent Brewing is a small brewery “out in the woods” as Mark says, and he brings their Tilted Kilt Pale Ale, and the Skullsplitter IPA, and we debate whether they are open for copyright issues, but finally decide that the beer speaks for itself!

Friends of the show Deb and John took a trip to Indiana and ended up in Griffith where they discovered 2 of 3 great breweries in that town. Griffith is just over an hour from the Brit and Yankee pub here in the western suburbs, so very attainable as a day trip. Our friends visit Pokro Brewing and New Oberpfalz Brewing and return with 3 samples from each and report on the ambience to be found at each. Joining the pub crew and Deb and John, are listeners Big Dave and Big Nate for a final tasting panel of real consumers and craft beer fans.

Both of the breweries featured have a European flavor to their brews, Pokro specializing in Belgian, English and other European styles, and New Oberpfalz on German-influenced beers. We also have included an American IPA from each just to entice those who prefer that style.

By way of introduction, and because our first love is Illinois brews, we take a local brew from Noon Whistle that is a European style and make it our ‘warm-up’ brew, their Face Smack Berliner Weiss.

There’s plenty of pub chat, and the panel all have their own tastes so we think we got a pretty good representation of these breweries and the overall opinion is they are well worth visiting!